It’s been a good while since I’ve written a column on “Our Hometown.” I grew up in a little town, population 600 in the semi-rural backwoods. Many of you too, grew up in some little strange out of the way place. We share together the odd, strange, bizarre and beloved things that go on in small towns. Today, there is a town some ten miles to the south of where I grew up, one that has grown and declined over the decades, for it is in the factory rust belt. Belt, heck, full...

In the imagination of a young soldier, there was this one extraordinary midnight the Yanks liberated fifty middle-aged Brit officers captured and held by the Germans in dreary sheds at the Czechoslovak border. “The British officers were among the first English speaking prisoners to be taken in WWII…. They had not seen a woman or a child for four years… They hadn’t seen any birds either. Not even sparrow could come into the camp. “The Englishmen were officers. Each of them...

Every person’s life is like a kaleidoscope. Some pick up another’s life, hold it to the light and all the glass chips fall this way or that. And the person sighting through the cylinder puts it down and turns away, saying they’ve seen it all, when in fact, they’ve only seen one facet, one pattern in another’s life. Thus some remember only one thing or two about the life of another long lived. But there are other ways to see most of a life in depth, that is, to keep...

In ancient mythos, the rainmaker symbolizes a part of the psyche which detaches and leaves the mad world and goes into the forest and down under the roots of the trees and sees the world from there… through a unique, set-apart zeitgeist, a spirit of our times that is not dedicated to apoplexy over cultural contretemps, but just calm observations, a remembering of honor… and unusual ways of dealing with the dishonorable. Here are two odd rainmakers… I was listening to some live...

WE ARE THE ATOMIC CHILDREN AND WE ARE STILL DANCING It began before we went to school… we asked for live ponies, but received inflatable whales made of polypropylene instead. But it was okay. We waited and waited for April so we could dance can-can tournaments in the rain. We wore eerie iridescent swim suits glowing like uranium. Our swimsuits were always too big and showed everything, or they were always too small and showed everything. But it was okay. We were happy drowned bird-girls with...

In the past, we literally had to sell our house to pay a huge hospital bill. The hospital sent the bloodhounds. My husband had just lost his job. I was near death. Afterward, anything related to that crisis was big red lettered ‘pre-existing condition,” by any and every insurer we’d ever had… and although undertaking scrupulous selfcare (dont drink dont smoke, dont do illegal drugs, dont lay-about, ok ok, well some layabout in order to read books.. and eat fresh fruit til...

When I first read the WSJ opinion piece by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, something seemed a little odd. So, I also went to his blog and glanced at the article he had submitted to the WSJ. It seemed, just to an editor’s squinty eye, that what Mackey wrote was originally about 200 words longer than the WSJ piece. Mr. Mackey is known for quoting stats, people, and studies… and often. There was a dearth of those in the WSJ article. Hmmm, I wondered, what happened? On the case with bloodhounds,...

Not sure those 176 realize many of them just signed their death warrants to compete with biggie corps that have far deeper pockets. Based on the model as stated so far which has slim details… To choose more than one paper to read, if one had to pay, would cost the heavy reader of news anywhere from $100 to $17,000 a year just to read news. Steven Brill, above, is one of the masterminds. He says there will be some sort of take-one/take- all subscription rate. Perhaps. But wasnt that what many...

When Rupert immigrated to the USA and began/ continued buying up newspapers and media outlets like a hungry Jabba, and especially when he bought up the venerable Wall Street Journal, he threw around a lot of words saying ‘Ah, open access for all’… his properties would be open content, no fees for most anything except expert financial reports. But, Rupert has changed his mind today and wants to charge for news content across the board now. It wouldn’t be at such issue if...

FOR THOSE WHO CAME, BUT COULD NOT STAY While you and I were being born, growing “in the little bread oven”… as it was often said back then… there were other little babies across the world, suddenly thrust into real ovens, and they were not allowed to grow any more. Don’t tell me that that is the past and none of our concern. This is in cellular memory, and we are here to make certain that we speak for those who were born and who died before they could speak. Don’t tell me that...

UPDATE: Miss Ling and Miss Lee are said to be aboard an aeroplane along with Bill Clinton, heading for California where their families await them. Yay. Safe journey to all. ….. But, the feat is not Bill Clinton’s alone. Here is today’s article about how Miss Ling’s sister, well known journalist Lisa Ling used the polite form of apology and supplication publicly to ask North Korea to have mercy on and free her sister and colleague: ………Apologizing for rather...

Dear Readers, Today Joe Gandelman wrote about the ongoing issue of uncivil discourse, “Why don’t I just copy this first sentence and repaste it every week? But here goes: Just when you thought bar on American early 21st century political “debate” has fallen about as far as it can go, you’re wrong….” In that exact vein, here is a Guest Voice by Elijah Sweete, a lawyer of many decades of experience. He shares a birthday with President Obama today, and contrasts the distinct...

Her first name, Corazon, means Heart, her last name, Aquino, is often a name still bestowed in honor of the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctor of the church who was known for his down to earth rhetoric such as this one I recall from childhood Catholic school: God’s thought is pure, but it has to be passed through mud: Us. They called her Cory affectionately and she ruled for 6 years during which time she raised up many souls out of the mud, amongst many, highlighting the issues of Philippino...

Here at YouTube, over 9 million people have watched this. I watched it. I cried. Not because of the occasion, not because this is how it used to be, in a different form, in my deeply ethnic childhood when I saw my dad do it at every event of this kind… but because tonight, I so wished my dad, had he lived past his 88th year, could have seen this little film tonight too. He would have cried out, Ya! Ya! Dats de vay it supposed to be!! It is another day, another time now, but dad having been...

Gidget the Chihuahua, Taco Bell star, has died. She was 15 years old. The owner of Studio Animal Services in Castaic says Gidget suffered a stroke late Tuesday and had to be put down. This little dog caused controversy when she appeared in Taco Bell ads with a male voice-over, saying “Yo quiero Taco Bell,” in Spanish: “I want Taco Bell.” It made my whole family laugh to see that cute little dog. But, some activists were critical for they felt the ad furthered Mexican stereotypes....

One might wonder, did the exhibition for money, beatings, and slavery of creatures, lead to ‘hey good idea,’ let’s do the same to vulnerable humans? Human slaves of every race, the Scots and Irish tribes and the clans to the British, the underclass of peasant farmers under Rome, the Africans taken by their own kings, the Aztec and Mayans and Inkans, also enslaved by their own kings, modern trafficking in human beings for ill-use. And the animals. Which brutal way of treating living...

Perhaps the tide about how we treat our returning soldiers is changing. Finally. After decades of high military denial. A new report has just been released contravening the VA’s stance on PTSD in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it is much more prevalent than the military has admitted. You might recall much said about not awarding the Purple Heart to men and woman who are wounded in soul and spirit and mind by seeing /hearing/ being in war. You might also remember much...

I have been trying to teach myself graphic design out of a book. It is slow going. Learning things that have many parts combined with abstract ideas take me much reading, re-reading and re-re-reading. I can learn more easily it seems if there are applicable pictures of whatever the learning is… and living poeple actually moving their eyes and hands to make the expert motions so I can see how the body does these things… and follow it with my body in a similar manner… In what little...

People wonder about mothers, human and animal, who walk away from their babies… who refuse and do not nurture their young, who literally walk away, stray out late, leave the child in the bush, in the car, at home alone unable to reach the doorknob and without food… the children cry themselves to sleep, furry or human child, matters not… each needs a mother, her warmth, her regard, her watching over them while they are yet so vulnerable, not knowing up from down, not knowing predator...

Walter Cronkite who covered the landing at the beaches of Normandy, who covered the Nazis’ final crumbling at the Nuremburg Trials, who announced the assassination of President John Kennedy… Mr. Cronkite lived in the midst of the most compelling, horrible, and expansive times of the last hundred years. You’ve left the world with ever so many stories to tell– for, as you used to say about reality… “that’s the way it is.” Well done dear old storyteller...

I’m one of the leaders of a girl gang of Latinas. Many are heads of non-profits, executive directors of institutions, trustees of universities, holders of political office, change agents in education who saw school integration to fruition. Since we are a girl gang of elders who have many young students who are also movers and shakers in our culture now, we wanted a unifying group symbol and decided on black leather jackets bearing our La Señora de Guadalupe on the back– with “Las...

Flooding, lake rising every day… my heart shakes, water breaks over its banks… My lifetime of books, my art, my everything is stored on ground lower than the lake. It has slash-rained here in the Rockies every day for last thirty… another 11 we’ll outdo Noah… Rains in the mountains afternoons- usual. But not like this, thunder, sheet lightning, fork lightning, lamp glowing yellow over my battered desk, days wholly dark now. Yet, lake falls back most every night, let...

Inquirers taking pot shots at Judge Sotomayor in hearings today, are doing a flabby and anemic imitation of the old traditionalists of our tribes who count coup. To ‘ride up to the enemy’ and touch them with your weapon but not to engage, and then to ride away to safety. To be able, at the end of the day, to say to those gathered to hear the stories, “I was brave, I touched the the vicious enemy, even though I was outgunned. Although I could not make a kill, I am still worthy as...

Reading all the apologists and forgetters this past week re death of Robert Strange McNamara, calling him ‘an honorable man,’ and other cosmetic paint that chips off as fast as it is slung over the man who made it so mothers, fathers, wives, children, brothers, sisters, old men and old women… had to dig graves deep year after year after year to bury their young. On both sides of the world. A war of boys sent to kill boys. All the young who died, died for what McNamara finally admitted...

Let us understand: It was 1988 when an old man who worked his way up to being supreme leader of Islam in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against the British born, ethnic Indian author Salman Rushdie, saying the writer should be murdered, and a bounty offered to the killer. Rushdie had published The Satanic Verses and the Ayotollah RK and his followers held this was an ‘blasphemous’ depiction of prophet Muhammad. A fatwa is an opinion from a religious point of view,...